Definition and Examples of Content (Lexical) Words

Definition and Examples of Content (Lexical) Words In English grammar and semantics, a  content word is a  word that conveys information in a text or speech act. Also known as a lexical word, lexical morpheme,  substantive category, or contentive.  Contrast with  function word  or grammatical word. In his book The Secret Life of Pronouns (2011), social psychologist James W. Pennebaker expands this definition: Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or action. . . . Content words are absolutely necessary to convey an idea to someone else. Content words- which include nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs- belong to open classes of words: that is, new members are readily added. The denotation of a content word, say  Kortmann and Loebner, is the category, or set, of all its potential referents (Understanding Semantics, 2014). Examples and Observations All morphemes can be divided into the categories lexical [content] and grammatical [function]. A lexical morpheme has a meaning that can be understood fully in and of itself- {boy}, for example, as well as {run}, {green}, {quick}, {paper}, {large}, {throw}, and {now}. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are typical kinds of lexical morphemes. Grammatical morphemes, on the other hand- such as {of}, {and}, {the}, {ness}, {to}, {pre}, {a}, {but}, {in}, and {ly}- can be understood completely only when they occur with other words in a sentence. (Thomas E. Murray, The Structure of English. Allyn and Bacon, 1995)Reverend Howard Thomas  was the presiding elder over a district in  Arkansas, which included  Stamps. (Maya Angelou,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969)Most people with low self-esteem have earned it. (George Carlin, Napalm Silly Putty. Hyperion, 2001)The  odor  of fish hung thick in the air. (Jack Driscoll,  Wanting Only to Be Heard. University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center. (Jon Stewart) Function Words vs. Content Words Grammatical words [function words] tend to be short: they are normally of one syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes (I, he, do, on, or). Content words are longer and, with the exception of ox and American Englishs ax, are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This criterion of length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of words in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally de-emphasised in pronunciation. (Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997) All languages make some distinction between content words and function words.  Content words carry descriptive meaning; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are types of content word. Function words are typically little words, and they signal relations between parts of sentences, or something about the pragmatic import of a sentence, e.g. whether it is a question. Lewis Carrolls Jabberwocky poem illustrates the distinction well: Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe. In this poem all the made-up words are content words; all the others are function words. In English, function words include determiners, such as the, a, my, your, pronouns (e.g. I, me, you, she, them), various auxiliary verbs (e.g. have, is, can, will do), coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but), and subordinating conjunctions (e.g. if, when, as, because). Prepositions are a borderline case. They have some semantic content, but are a small closed class, allowing hardly any historical innovation. Some English prepositions serve a mainly grammatical function, like of (what is the meaning of of?) and others have clear descriptive  (and relational) content, like under.  New content words in a language can  be readily invented; new nouns, in particular, are continually being coined, and new verbs (e.g. Google, gazump) and adjectives (e.g. naff, grungy) also not infrequently come into use. The small set of function words in a language, by contrast, is much more fixed and relatively steady over centuries. (James R. Hurford, The  Origins of Language: A Slim Guide.  Oxford University Press, 2014) Content Words in Speech Typically, the prominent syllable in a tone unit will be a content word (e.g. a noun or verb) rather than a function word (e.g. a preposition or article), since content words carry more meaning than function words. Function words will only be stressed if prominence on them is contextually warranted. (Charles F. Meyer, Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge University  Press, 2010)